TCM Schedule for Friday, May 21 -- TCM Memorial Tribute -- Lena Horne

[Staph]

Five score and six years, our patron saint, Robert Montgomery, was born in Beacon, New York. Today, TCM has given us a day full of his early films. And this evening, we pay tribute to the late Lena Horne. Enjoy!




4:30am -- The Last Hunt (1956)
Two frontiersmen clash over the slaughter of a buffalo herd.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Lloyd Nolan, Debra Paget
Dir: Richard Brooks
C-104 mins, TV-PG

US government marksmen actually shot and killed buffalo during production as part of a scheduled herd-thinning.


6:30am -- The Big House (1930)
An attempted prison break leads to a riot.
Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery
Dir: George Hill
BW-87 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (sound director), and Best Writing, Achievement -- Frances Marion

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Wallace Beery, and
Best Picture

In Frances Marion's original script, the characters played by Leila Hyams and Robert Montgomery were husband and wife. After the film flopped in a preview screening, MGM studio executive Irving Thalberg decided that the problem was that audiences, especially women, didn't want to see the Chester Morris character have an affair with a married woman. So the script was rewritten to make Montgomery and Hyams brother and sister. Scenes were reshot and the film, in its modified form, became a major hit.


8:00am -- The Divorcee (1930)
The double standard destroys a liberal couple's marriage.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Chester Morris, Conrad Nagel, Robert Montgomery
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
BW-82 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Norma Shearer

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Robert Z. Leonard, Best Writing, Achievement -- John Meehan, and Best Picture

Prior to this film, Norma Shearer had primarily played very "proper," ladylike roles. She was eager to change her image and do parts that were more sensuous, so she launched a campaign to get the part of Jerry. MGM producers were skeptical - none more so than Irving Thalberg, who was also Shearer's husband. To convince him that she could handle a more "sexy" role, Shearer did a photo shoot with her posing provocatively in lingerie, and after seeing the pictures, Thalberg agreed to cast her. The decision paid off, as Shearer won Best Actress at the Academy Awards that year.


9:30am -- Private Lives (1931)
A divorced couple rekindles the spark after landing in adjoining honeymoon suites with new mates.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Reginald Denny, Una Merkel
Dir: Sidney Franklin
BW-84 mins, TV-G

Robert Montgomery was accidentally knocked unconscious during the fight scene with Norma Shearer.


11:00am -- Faithless (1932)
A spoiled rich girl is wiped out by the Depression.
Cast: Tallulah Bankhead, Robert Montgomery, Hugh Herbert, Maurice Murphy
Dir: Harry Beaumont
BW-77 mins, TV-PG

Robert Montgomery was widely considered to be one of the best dressed men in Hollywood and for years did not carry a wallet because it ruined the drape of his suits.


12:30pm -- Hide-Out (1934)
Farmers take in an injured racketeer and try to reform him.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Elizabeth Patterson
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-81 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Mauri Grashin

Remade in 1941 as I'll Wait For You, with Robert Sterling and Marsha Hunt in the Montgomery and O'Sullivan roles.


2:00pm -- Night Must Fall (1937)
A charming young man worms his way into a wealthy woman's household, then reveals a deadly secret.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Merle Tottenham, Kathleen Harrison, Dame May Whitty, Rosalind Russell
Dir: Richard Thorpe
BW-116 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Montgomery, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Dame May Whitty

Based on the play by actor/director/writer Emlyn Williams.


4:00pm -- The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)
A chic jewel thief in England falls in love with one of her marks.
Cast: Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan
Dir: Richard Boleslawski
BW-98 mins, TV-G

Myrna Loy was originally cast as Fay Cheyney, while Joan Crawford was cast in Parnell (1937). Because Crawford did not like her role in that film, she switched roles and films with Loy.


5:45pm -- Lady in the Lake (1947)
Philip Marlowe searches for a missing woman in this mystery shot entirely from the detective's viewpoint.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Tom Tully
Dir: Robert Montgomery
BW-103 mins, TV-PG

The entire movie plot unfolds from lead Robert Montgomery's point of view, thus creating a rarity in film: the principal character is only seen on-screen as a reflection in mirrors and windows, and as the narrator speaking directly to the audience.


7:30pm -- TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell Under the Influence: Joan Allen (2008)
Celebrities reveal the classic movies that influenced their lives in interviews with acclaimed film critic/interviewer Elvis Mitchell.
C-27 mins, TV-PG

Interesting Joan Allen quote: "Over 50% of Americans don't agree with the administration <[of President George W. Bush>]; that's a lot of people. But they don't get the press. I know myself and my friends in New York were devastated after the last election <[2004>]. We could hardly stand up it was so devastating. And those are the people that I'm around a fair amount."


What's On Tonight: TCM MEMORIAL TRIBUTE: LENA HORNE




8:00pm -- The Duke Is Tops (1938)
A producer's romance with his star ends when the latter is offered a better job in New York.
Cast: Ralph Cooper, Lena Horne, Lawrence Criner, Monte Hawley
Dir: William Nolte
BW-73 mins, TV-PG

Lena Horne's screen debut.


9:20pm -- One Reel Wonders: Studio Visit (1946)
A Pete Smith Specialty short exploring film lots and what goes on behind-the-scenes.
Cast: Pete Smith
BW-10 mins

This short starts out as a visit to a sound stage to see Pete Smith make one of his short films. When production delays occur, Smith visits other sound stages on the lot to see what else is being filmed. The audience gets to see a sleight-of-hand artist practicing his craft, a 3-year-old girl with a perfect sense of balance, and Lena Horne singing in a bathtub (cut from Cabin In The Sky (1943).


9:30pm -- Cabin In The Sky (1943)
God and Satan battle for the soul of a wounded gambler.
Cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
BW-99 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics) for the song "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe".

A scene showing Lena Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" while taking a bath was cut, but later appeared in Studio Visit (1946).


11:15pm -- Panama Hattie (1942)
A nightclub owner in Panama takes on Nazi spies.
Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Sothern, "Rags" Ragland, Ben Blue
Dir: Norman Z. McLeod
BW-80 mins, TV-G

Although Ethel Merman was passed over for the role of Hattie in this film, she later played the role in the TV production Panama Hattie (1954) (TV) costarring Art Carney and Ray Middleton.


12:45am -- The Fallen Sparrow (1943)
Nazi spies pursue a Spanish Civil War veteran in search of a priceless keepsake.
Cast: John Garfield, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak, Patricia Morison
Dir: Richard Wallace
BW-94 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- C. Bakaleinikoff and Roy Webb

Based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, a mystery writer who was given Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America in 1978 for her lifetime's achievements in fiction and criticism.


2:30am -- Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)
When her car breaks down, a jazz singer is held hostage by a deranged Elvis impersonator.
Cast: Leslie Uggams, Shelley Winters, Michael Christian, Ted Cassidy
Dir: Richard Robinson
C-85 mins, TV-MA

Loosely based on Jean Genet's play "The Balcony" - the first film version of which also starred Shelley Winters in 1963.


4:00am -- Hootenanny Hoot (1963)
Television producers discover country/western music at a small-town college.
Cast: Peter Breck, Ruta Lee, Joby Baker, Pamela Austin
Dir: Gene Nelson
BW-92 mins, TV-G

The soundtrack includes a ton of folk and country/western songs and singers, including "Hootenanny Hoot" and "Building a Railroad" sung by Sheb Wooley, "Abilene" sung by George Hamilton IV, "Puttin' on the Style" and "Foolish Questions" sung by The Gateway Trio, "The Ballad of Little Romy" and "Wade in the Water" sung by Judy Henske, "Sweet Love" sung by Chris Crosby, "Frankie's Man Johnny" sung by Johnny Cash, "There's a Meeting Here Tonight" sung by Joe & Eddy, "The Frozen Logger" sung by Cathie Taylor, and "Frogg" and "Little Cory" sung by The Brothers Four.

[Staph]

1. Lena Horne Profile

Although Lena Horne never had the movie career she deserved, she managed to make an electrifying impact in her guest appearances and occasional acting roles. An exotic beauty with velvet skin, flashing eyes and a uniquely vibrant voice, she was the first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major film studio (MGM). Because of the tenor of the times (the 1940s and '50s), the studio confined her mostly to isolated numbers that could be cut when the films played the American South. Horne was blacklisted by the film and television industries in the 1950s, possibly because of her sympathetic relationship with Paul Robeson. She compensated for her limited exposure in Hollywood with enormous success in nightclubs and recordings.

Born in 1917 in Brooklyn, Horne left school at age 16 to join the chorus at Harlem's Cotton Club. She made her Broadway debut in a small part in the play Dance with Your Gods in 1934, and her recording debut two years later. Her first film role was in the low-budget, all-black musical The Duke Is Tops (1938), in which she plays a young singer with a small-time band who gets a shot at Broadway. Memorably, she sings "I Know You Remember."

Horne's MGM contract began with one of her "specialty" appearances, singing "Just One of These Things" in the Cole Porter musical Panama Hattie (1942), starring Ann Sothern. Then came a major role in Vincente Minnelli's all-black musical Cabin in the Sky (1943), in which Horne is the seductress who ties to lure Eddie "Rochester" Anderson away from faithful wife Ethel Waters. Horne's songs include "Honey in the Honeycomb" and "Life Is Full of Consequence."

As one of several guest stars in the Gene Kelly/Kathryn Grayson starrer, Thousands Cheer (1943), she sings "Honeysuckle Rose." The specialty routines continued with Horne singing "You're So Indifferent" in Swing Fever (1943), starring bandleader Kay Kyser; "Jericho" in I Dood It (1943), starring Red Skelton; "Paper Doll" in Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), starring June Allyson; and "Brazilian Boogie," "Amor" and "Somebody Loves Me" in Broadway Rhythm (1944).

In Till the Clouds Roll by (1946), a fictionalized biography of Jerome Kern, Horne was given the role of Julie in a condensed version of Show Boat and provides one of the movie's highlights with her smoldering version of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man." When a full-length version of that musical was made by MGM five years later, Horne -- despite having proved how powerful she could be in the role -- was passed over in favor of her friend Ava Gardner.

It was back to the "guest role" routine for Horne, singing "Love" in the all-star Ziegfeld Follies (1946); "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "Where or When" in Words and Music (1948), starring Mickey Rooney and a host of MGM stars; and "Baby, Come Out of the Clouds" in Duchess of Idaho (1950), starring Esther Williams.

After a long absence from films, Horne returned in a dramatic role opposite Richard Widmark in the Western Death of a Gunfighter (1969). In the movie version of the stage musical The Wiz (1978) she played Glinda the Good Witch in a cast that also included Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.

In the 1980s Horne won a Tony for her one-woman Broadway show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, in which she subsequently toured with huge international success. Her many honors have included three Grammy Awards including a lifetime achievement award in 1989, and a Kennedy Center award in 1984. In June 1997, her 80th birthday was celebrated with the presentation of the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement in Vocal Artistry.

by Roger Fristoe

* Films in Bold air on 5/21/2010

[Matilda]

2. Robert Montgomery is our Star of the Month here on TCM.

They've already played quite a few of his films, mostly with either Rosalind Russell or Joan Crawford, including
some very early ones that I've never seen before, e.g. "Our Blushing Brides", "The Last of Mrs Cheyney", and
No More Ladies".

It's very interesting to see these early films and it's hard to escape the conclusion that the studio often didn't
really know what to do with their stars - they just seemed to sign people who looked good and often could act,
but they didn't seem to know where their strengths lay, and any old script would do. No wonder the stars became
frustrated in the end - this was the great weakness of the old studio system. Robert Montgomery was often cast as
a charming man about town, in roles that almost any actor could have played. Even after "Night Must Fall", where
he gave such a chilling performance, he still went on later to do more froth and bubble. Rosalind Russell in
"Night Must Fall" is another example - she played a straight, plain-Jane role that didn't require any particular
depth and certainly didn't make use of her wonderful skills in sophisticated comedy.

[Matilda]

3. Robert Montgomery and Norma Shearer - wow!

This weekend TCM have been showing Robert Montgomery with Norma
Shearer. It's been a bit like taking a course in early Hollywood history.

First they showed "Their Own Desire", made in 1929, so it would have been one of the earliest talkies. It showed – not only was the sound quality uneven, the lighting cues weren't smooth, the editing was poor and some of the acting, most notably that of Belle Bennett as Norma Shearer's mother, was woeful. I looked her up and found she'd done dozens of silents from 1913 on, but clearly she was ill at ease with speaking on camera and her performance was very stilted. Robert Montgomery appeared rather uncomfortable on screen and tended to overact at times, but Shearer was as relaxed and natural as the script allowed her to be.

That was followed by a 19131 classic, "Strangers May Kiss", obviously pre-Code and portrayed Shearer as a jilted good-time girl, if a very wealthy one. It wasn't self-consciously racy, but neither did it ever moralise; it was just true to life and thoroughly believable (except when Shearer left Spain with five minutes notice, leaving behind all her worldly goods and turned up in Paris the next day beautifully dressed and bejewelled).

What was amazing was how much the studio had learned about picture-making in the two year interval – the same dream team of Douglas Shearer, Cedric Gibbons, Adrian, and William H. Daniels, but everything worked so much more smoothly. This time the acting honours belonged to Robert Montgomery, who was always at ease; Shearer displayed at times some annoying mannerisms, but there's never any doubting her screen presence. (But I wanted her to marry Montgomry and not Neil Hamilton; I was very disappointed.) It's a shame that the film is rather worn; it deserves to be restored. One of those times you might wish to be very rich and donate the money for it.

And in between I watched "Private Lives" – I had doubts about watching it, because it's so hard to escape visions of Noel Coward (although Mr Rickman proved, in the brief glimpses I've had of it on Youtube, that it can be played to great effect in a very modern style). It was interesting to see an American take on this very British play, but Montgomery really was awful in it – he kept trying to be Noel Coward and then forgetting and lapsing into his normal self; it would have been better if he hadn't tried. Shearer was infinitely better, very natural and funny, and I think it's one of the best performance I've seen her give; with the poor quality of the rewritten script, that's all the more to her credit. Reginald Denny and Una Merkel, two thorough professionals, played the new spouses of the two leads in thankless roles that made you wonder how on earth they had ever made it to first base with their respective partners.

But overall, I'm thoroughly enjoying this Robert Montgomery festival. Generally, on TCM here the star of the month is featured in no more than four or five films, but this time, I've already seen nine of his films and we still have a week to go.